Princess in Pink (The Princess Diaries 5)

French: Écrivez une histoire personel

World Civ: pages 310–330

Wednesday, April 30, in the limo on the way home from the Plaza

Grandmère fully knows there is something up with me. But she thinks it’s because I’m upset over the whole going-to-Genovia-for-the-summer thing. As if I don’t have much more immediate concerns.

“We shall have a lovely time in Genovia this summer, Amelia. They are currently excavating a tomb they believe might belong to your ancestress, Princess Rosagunde. I understand that the Genovian mummification processes used in the eighth century were really every bit as advanced as ones employed by the Egyptians. You might actually get to gaze upon the face of the woman who founded the royal house of Renaldo.”

Great. I get to spend my summer looking up some old mummy’s nasal cavity. My dream come true. Sorry, Mia. No hanging out with your true love at Coney Island for you. No fun volunteer work tutoring little kids with their reading. No cool summer job at Kim’s Video, rewinding Princess Mononoke and Fist of the North Star. No, you get to commune with a thousand-year-old corpse. Yippee!

I guess I must have been more upset about the whole Michael thing than even I thought, because midway through Grandmère’s lecture on tipping (manicurists: $3; pedicurists: $5; cab drivers: $2 for rides under $10, $5 for airport trips; double the tax for restaurant checks except in states where the tax is less than 8 percent; etc.) she went, “AMELIA! WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH YOU?”

I must have jumped about ten feet into the air. I was totally thinking about Michael. About how good he would look in a tux. About how I could buy him a red rose boutonniere, just the plain kind without the baby’s breath, because boys don’t like baby’s breath. And I could wear a black dress, one of those off-one-shoulder kinds like Kirsten Dunst always wears to movie premieres, with a butterfly hem and a slit up the side, and high heels with laces that go up your ankles.

Only Grandmère says black on girls under eighteen is morbid, that off-one-shoulder gowns and butterfly hems look like they were made that way by mistake, and that those lace-up high heels look like the kind of shoes Russell Crowe wore in Gladiator—not a flattering look on most women.

But whatever. I could fully put on body glitter. Grandmère doesn’t even KNOW about body glitter.

“Amelia!” Grandmère was saying. She couldn’t yell too loud because her face was still stinging from the chemical peel. I could tell because Rommel, her mostly hairless toy poodle who looks like he’s seen a chemical peel or two himself, kept leaping up into her lap and trying to lick her face, like it was a piece of raw meat or whatever. Not to gross anybody out, but that’s sort of how it looked. Or like Grandmère had accidentally stepped in front of one of those hoses they used to get the radiation off Cher in Silkwood.

“Have you listened to a single word I’ve said?” Grandmère looked peeved. Mostly because her face hurt, I’m sure. “This could be very important to you someday, if you happen to be stranded without a calculator or your limo.”

“Sorry, Grandmère,” I said. I was sorry, too. Tipping is totally my worst thing, on account of how it involves math, and also thinking quickly on your feet. When I order food from Number One Noodle Son, I always have to ask the restaurant while I am still on the phone with them how much it will be, so I can work on calculating how much to tip the delivery guy before he gets to the door. Because otherwise he ends up standing there for, like, ten minutes while I figure out how much to give him for a seventeen-dollar-and-fifty-cent order. It’s embarrassing.

“I don’t know where your head’s been lately, Amelia,” Grandmère said, all crabby. Well, you would be crabby too, if you’d paid money to have the top two or three layers of your skin chemically removed from your face. “I hope you’re not still worrying about your mother and that ridiculous home birth she’s planning. I told you before, your mother’s forgotten what labor feels like. As soon as her contractions kick in, she’ll be begging to be taken to the hospital for a nice epidural.”

I sighed. Although the fact that my mother is choosing a home birth over a nice, safe, clean hospital birth—where there are oxygen tanks and candy machines and hot doctors like Dr. Kovac from ER—is upsetting, I have been trying not to think about it too much… especially since I suspect Grandmère is right. My mother cries like a baby when she stubs her toe. How is she going to withstand hours and hours of labor pains? She is much older now than when she gave birth to me. Her thirty-six-year-old body is in no shape for the rigors of childbirth. She doesn’t even work out!

Grandmère fastened her evil eye on me.

“I suppose the fact the weather’s starting to get warm isn’t helping,” she said. “Young people tend to get flighty in the spring. And, of course, there’s your birthday tomorrow.”

I fully let Grandmère think that’s what was distracting me. My birthday and the fact that my friends and I are all twitterpated, like Thumper gets in springtime in Bambi.

“You are a very difficult person for whom to find a suitable birthday gift, Amelia,” Grandmère continued, reaching for her Sidecar and her cigarettes. Grandmère has her cigarettes sent to her from Genovia, so she doesn’t have to pay the astronomical tax on them that they charge here in New York in the hopes of making people quit smoking on account of it being too expensive. Except that it isn’t working, since all of the people in Manhattan who smoke are just hopping on the PATH train and going over to New Jersey to buy their cigarettes.

“You are not the jewelry type,” Grandmère went on, lighting up and puffing away. “And you don’t seem to have any appreciation whatsoever for couture. And it isn’t as if you have any hobbies.”

I pointed out to Grandmère that I do have a hobby. Not just a hobby, even, but a calling: I write.

Grandmère just waved her hand, and said, “But not a real hobby. You don’t golf or paint.”

It kind of hurt my feelings that Grandmère doesn’t think writing is a real hobby. She is going to be very surprised when I grow up and become a published author. Then writing will not only be my hobby, but my career. Maybe the first book I write will be about her. I will call it Clarisse: Ravings of a Royal, A Memoir by Princess Mia of Genovia. And Grandmère won’t be able to sue, just like Daryl Hannah couldn’t sue when they made that movie about her and John F. Kennedy Jr., because all of it will be 100 percent true. HA!

“What DO you want for your birthday, Amelia?” Grandmère asked.

I had to think about that one. Of course what I REALLY want Grandmère can’t give me. But I figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask. So I drew up the following list:

WHAT I WOULD LIKE FOR MY FIFTEENTH

BIRTHDAY, BY MIA THERMOPOLIS,

AGED 14 YEARS AND 364 DAYS

End to world hunger

New pair overalls, size eleven